News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1887-04-07
NOTES ON VILLAGE IMPROVEMENT.
What Should be Done to Beautify
Our Homes.

The first step in village improvement
should be to promote its healthfulness.
It is a very poor sort of improvement
which occupies itself with laying out
walks and smoothing door-yards and
lawns, and planting trees and preparing
flower beds, while it leaves the all
around the dwellings, to be polluted by
| the noxious effluvia arising from q
neighboring drain or from foul substances
left upon the surface of the ground for
lack of any proper provision fol
their disposal, or which leaves house
holds to depend for the water they use
upon wells situated so near to barn
wards or cess-pOols that they may be
contaminated by them. 1t is cleans
ing of the outside of the cup and plat
ter, while within it may be full OF all
uncleanness.
A committee should be appointed,
composed of energetic and capable per
sons. who shall examine the entire vii
LACE or town district, to see where the
laws of health are infringed, and then
to institute the proper cOrrectives and
safeguards, remembering that what en-
dangers the health and life OF one
household threatens to some extent the
health and life of the whole community.
Having attended to what lie deeper than
the surface, health and life itself, heed
may then properly be given to those
things which are upon the surface, such
as streets, walks, trees, lawns, the dis
posal of grounds, and hundred other
things of more or less Importance.
Village improvement is sometimes
village misimprovement. The first i'm
pulse of many organizations for the for
mer purpose is to straighten streets, to
level elevations, to plant in rigid lines,
to cut everything after geometrlcal
pattern, to make the architecture of
buildings follow, SO far as possible, one
model, and this they call improvement.
When their taste has become further
developed, it begins to dawn upon them
that in proportion as they have made
their paths straight they have lost the
peculiar charm of the village without
gaining the advantages of the town.
Many of our villages are threaded by
sparkling streams which necess1tate
bridges for their passage; but this is
no reason why these bridges should be
the positive disfgurements of the land
scape which they SO often are.
In regard to the planting of trees in
village streets much might be said.
This is, probably, one of the first things
thought of and undertaken by Village
Improvement Societies. This is well.
And perhaps it may be said that every
tree thus planted is positive gain both
in regard to appearance and comfort
But there is often so little care taken in
planting trees or in their subsequent
management, that we get many slckly
and imperfect specimens where We
should have noble and stately growths.
Here it is emphatically true that what
is worth doing at all is worth doing well.
Then we make the mistake of limiting
ourselves to very few species of trees,
when we have an almost countless
variety from which to choose. No other
country is so rich in the variety and
beauty of its trees as ours. Yet we have
restricted ourselves in street-planting
for the most part to the elms and
naples. Why should we not make use
of the ash, the birches, the beech, the
Eastwood or linden, the locust, the
chestnut, the hickory, the sycamore, the
magnificent tUllip-tree, the cypress, the
larch, with the cedars and other ever
green's, not to speak of many other trees
by a wise selection from which we may
secure endlessly varied effects of form
and color?
In planting about our dwellings, care
should be taken not to plant too many
trees, nor so near our houses as to over
shadow them or prevent light and all
from having free access to them. Trees
are good and greatly to be desired, but
we must not allow them to shut away
from US the sunlight. The fountain of
light is also the fountain of life. Sun
shine is absolutely essential to healthy
life and growth, whether animal or vege-
table. Bright green turf and few
growing green trees or shrubs, are
better near a dwelling than a growth OF
fores ttrees. II. EgIeston in Century,